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Former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain says he wants the feds to dial back DC’s role in bankrolling college costs, a day after President Obama took new steps to ease student-loan debt.
“I do not believe that it is the responsibility of the federal government to help fund a college education,” Cain said at an education forum sponsored in New York by News Corp. and the College Board.
“Our resources are limited, and I believe that the best solution is the one closest to the problem.”
He explained that he was able to put himself through college by working multiple jobs.
Cain, speaking by satellite from Arkansas, where he was promoting his new book, said he wants to let market forces work on states that do the worst job at educating young kids.
“I don’t believe you can micro-manage a good education out of Washington, DC, pure and simple,” he said.
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, who said he home-schooled his seven children, called for greater parental involvement, calling it a “cancer” on the system that “at a certain age, you sort of drop your kids off and are done with this.”
“We have narrowed the focus on education in our country . . . to just tests and academics and sort of this piece of what education is supposed to be about,” Santorum said
Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, who home-schooled her five biological children and 23 foster kids, said the federal government should get out of the education business.
“My preference would be to see the end of the federal government involvement [in education] and to enhance the local schools and the parents’ hands in all of that.”
She claimed that the educational outcomes for American kids were better before the federal government established a Department of Education and started meddling in schools in the late 1970s.
“I believe that children would be better served and . . . society would be better served if that role would evolve back to the states and to the local governments,” she said.
Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, who has seen his standing in the poll steadily rising in recent weeks, also weighed in on schooling:
“We should be in favor of the most rapid possible learning by the widest possible number of Americans . . . and we should want to do it at the least possible cost.”
But Gingrich leveled his toughest criticism at higher education, where spiraling costs are leaving students racked with debt after they graduate, and he said it’s not enough to make loans easier to get.
Calling the current model for college education “Drag it out as long as you can, this is a really great place to be,” Gingrich said more needs to be done to get students through school as fast as possible at lower cost.
In other developments on the campaign trail, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, whose poll numbers tanked after a series of subpar debate performances, may pass on future debates, Perry’s team revealed.
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